The Storytellers
by Orahiko
Summary: One golden spring afternoon. 'I told stories, but I had forgotten what a story was.'Chiharu Yamazaki, oneshot


**Chiharu/Yamazaki fluff by Orahiko. Don't own Cardcaptors, but love.**

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Chiharu's pov:

You were bored. That rarely happens, but when it does it's nearly destructive, and that means you want something to do. Fast.

You do strange things when you're bored. Right now you're begging the person who you might possibly love forever and ever to let you put makeup on him. He'll look good, though, and you're wearing a silly yellow sundress with white straps to school, for Casual Friday, and you want to have fun. You want to play. Mostly you want to spend time with him, and you'll be able to touch him. To feel his smile under childish fingertips. You've never felt like this without him beside you and you laugh until you choke when he asked you why he couldn't sneak up on you.

He keeps saying no, irritated and horrified, like most guys are, but you keep on begging. You could use that expression that nobody can resist, not even Li, that you practiced in your mirror till the wide, sweet eyes and flushed cheeks and brilliant, begging smile were all you could see, but you don't want to use that expression on him. The thought makes you feel cheap and dirty and hot with scorn so you choose to plead with your voice instead.

Sunburned crimson and lobster red, your hands wave in the air, punctuating your pleas, the fingertips stained brown with walnut shells and lemon juice from making your special secret ink. You ask him again, daring to push him past the limits of his patience, if he hates you forever it won't matter because then he won't ever forget you. It's that line of reasoning that caused this whole mess, you should have stopped talking to him from the minute you recognized it but you can't. You fell in love with him and it's stupid, because you aren't brave of kind or beautiful, and he is. You're like a stupid fragile fluttering moth to his flame, and you can almost see the image pass before your eyes briefly, the hovering of the drifting white wings mimicking the pulse of your own heartbeat.

He says yes finally, and you're ecstatic, forcing him into a chair in the middle of the trees. It doesn't matter how many people see you two together, they've long since resigned themselves to you, and yet you're really not quite sure about the way they feel about seeing Yamazaki with you, but they know something you don't know. And you're not sure you ever want to know it. How odd. Perhaps it's best this is out of the way.

Really, you love him, but you aren't strong enough to tell him. Ever. And it hurts.

You sketch a lazy, looping line along a roller coaster curve, the sky blue and the sun beating hot against your fingertips, the grey white kohl crumbling below your nails. It was a gift from some obscure relation in Egypt, but it looks good along his lashes. His lashes aren't long, but thick smudges of gray, and he fidgets nervously underneath your hand, blinking. I think it's caking, he comments, but you tell him it's supposed to be like that, and that it looks good anyway. His eyebrows are a few shades darker than his hair, and you ask him idly if he dyes them, the words filling your mouth to make up for the absently hungry silence to counterpoint the delicate motions of your hands. He chokes, wheezing laughter, and smiles up at you. You accept that as a no, breathlessly intent on his face.

You darken his eyelashes, and for some stupid reason can't breathe when he looks at you with open eyes. The moment feels precious, too precious for you, so you tell him to close them so you can apply shimmer to his cheekbones. He obeys silently, but speaks up again barely after you get over your sudden attack of shyness. Tell me a story, he demands, murmuring against your skin, and you comply, as usual. You tell him about the man in the moon, who makes candy for small children and gives it to them once a year, a story you thought you had forgotten, something you don't completely remember but easily make up, slipping into the rhythm of the fairy tale like you're slipping into your own skin.

The man in the dream you weave is diligent and strong, a tall man with hair as unkept as bamboo leaves and big knuckles and white-edged fingernails like crescent moons, and he pounds ingredients for candy in a stone stump, hollowed out patiently. He makes delicious candy for the children to eat, not completely out of sheer love but simple avarice; he stores every smile he's ever received in his memory and weighs them like a miser examining his coins, turning them around in his mind, remembering which ones are sad, and which ones are truly real, and innocence and memory blend in his mind like the spices that he grinds in his bowl.

You couldn't ever tell your stories to anyone other than Yamazaki, blissful, lying Yamazaki, not even to your best friend, most loved ones. The man in the moon is you and you're him and every time you tell him a story you give him a little piece of yourself, a fragment to memory, a hopeful wish, an imaginary thought, and you won't stop, because this is a gift, a terribly precious gift, and even if he doesn't understand it it's all you have to give for him. That's why you punch him when he tells lies, meaningless tales to amuse, console, and comfort, because it doesn't always contain a part of his soul and it's therefore useless and unfit to give his beloved friends, and you hope it truly doesn't contain a part of himself because then he'd bleed himself dry. And just in case the lies are true you give him what you have because he's your most precious, important person, and you wouldn't change this for anything.

But then again maybe you would, if for him.

You brush light shimmer across his freckled cheekbones and his cheeks are faintly dusted with red, even though you haven't applied any blush. This is your chance to touch his silky little boy skin and be close to him, and you're acutely aware of how young you both seem on the outside. He chuckles softly when the story's over, and you want to cheer, and run home and lock the door and hug your knees against your chest, misering bits of information, precious secrets that nobody knows like you do, like the soft bits of baby fat still clinging to his cheeks and the hidden freckle along the inside of his elbow, or the milky skin, pale from staying indoors for too long, yet faintly golden with traces of the dappled sunshine that slides through the leafy covering of the cherry trees and how many times you made him smile.

You tell him you love him, ask him if he wants your love to last, mock him, and beat him up, but it's a long running joke between the two of you and nothing more. It's a special secret. It's something you won't let anybody find out; so they think both of you are a couple, two halves of a whole and that he's yours, which he isn't. You aren't together, not even both in love, but it doesn't matter as long as you're with him. And it doesn't matter to him because he's too busy dreaming.

You love his stories and jokes, even when they're directed to others, the spell of his voice loses none of its potency by equal distribution among a crowd, you love his cheerful, bright smiles and his soft chuckles, and you like the fact he's steady and stronger than you and comfortable to hug and hold on to, a warm protector walking with you when you're scared, and yet in return you do so few things.

You cook for him, badly, because you really haven't mastered the subtle nuances of taste and perfect timing, your measurements and ingredients are wrong but he eats it anyway. You made him a teddy bear once, and you were angry because he didn't know the meaning of it when you expected him to and didn't produce the perfectly appropriate romantic response to a simple, superstitious gesture. You love him anyway even if he doesn't know exactly what to say, because he's him, but it still hurts a little sometimes. Sometimes it feels like you don't do _anything_ for him, anything at all, but at least you do one thing for him that keeps you happy.

You wake him up. He would lose himself in dreams as you were once caught, spinning lies and truth effortlessly into a never ending web that reached as far as the heavens and down into the depths of Hell. You were once a little girl, far, far younger than you are now, and you told wonderful story after story, captivating listeners and mesmerizing even the most skeptical and down to earth of listeners, but then you grew thin and white and shrank into corners, huddled in the cold rain because you told stories but you had forgotten what a story was. Your parents moved you away almost frantically, afraid for their strange daughter, half-forgotten and almost inescapably lost in dreams, and the home where you moved to was bathed in the strange golden light that pervaded the whole town, even your new school, and the mysteriously long blossoming cherry trees, and you met a boy who held your hand and believed in odd things, and you loved him, because you made it your mission to wake him up.

You loved him because there was nothing else to do, nothing else you could have possibly done upon knowing him. And you didn't want him to fade away a story fades away when forgotten, so people write them down on longer lasting pieces of paper and leather, and brand the glorious tales like living flames into memories. You once decide to become his paper, to write the words that made him up along the sides of arms and legs and in your very veins; you would live his story and his tales and not let him fade away. Because you loved him. And you were foolish. You still love him even now, and his stories, but you don't need to love the story to love him. His tales are him and he becomes his tales but you shift around the flickering empty soulless leeches that take part of him for every story told and made and grasp his hand and never let go. Even if you have to thump some sense into his thick skull, at the beginning of the day, when the dreams are over and the sunlight begins, he lives, but no longer within a dream.

The stories he tells everyone are important, to cheer and enjoy, but to live forever within them is madness. It's a madness you once knew. And you won't ever let it claim anybody anymore, not if you can help it, and certainly not the one you love.

But you digress.

You tell him you're done at last, and he doesn't look too girly, which he doesn't, and drag a grudging promise out of him to wear it today without washing off all your hard work. He smiles at you with his eyes open as if sharing a secret, which he is, perhaps, and you stare at him, stunned, with sun-dazed blank eyes and your mouth open. You didn't expect that.

The lunch bell rings and you two turn to go back, him complaining slightly about his lack of lunch, but he's still smiling. He really does look nice, but you stop him before he enters the classroom and thrust a tube of lip balm into his hands, for his chapped lips, accompanied by the usual threats. He accepts it without complaint, and without starting to ramble, thanks you graciously, leaving you with a dropping jaw and stupid smile. He really does look nice. Maybe tomorrow you'll tell him you love him, or just maybe soon, when he wakes up from his dream and realizes you're there. Hopefully, you won't have to wake him up, but it wouldn't be too bad if you did.

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_I'm awake, Chiharu. I'll tell you, soon. Not too soon, because I still need you. And I don't want you to leave my side, either. _

Owari

. : Dream of me…


End file.
